Jurors Give Moussaoui Life Term

A federal jury decided Wednesday to spare the life of Zacarias Moussaoui, ensuring that the first person to be held accountable for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will spend the rest of his life in prison.

The jury reached its decision after seven days of deliberations, and its verdict paperwork showed that the nine men and three women were widely split over how to punish the man who claimed he was to fly a fifth plane into the White House but whose trial suggested he actually knew little about the Sept. 11 plot.

The verdict ended a six-week trial punctuated by frequent outbursts from Moussaoui, tape recordings from the doomed United Flight 93, interrogation reports from the jailed Sept. 11 mastermind and the near-collapse of the prosecution after a government lawyer defied the judge’s orders.

The 37-year-old French Moroccan convicted terrorist sat ramrod-straight along a side wall in the courtroom and appeared to be silently praying as the jurors, looking exhausted, filed into the courtroom late in the afternoon.

When U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema read the verdict and announced that the decision was life without parole, Moussaoui -- who refused to stand -- betrayed no surprise.

But when the courtroom was being cleared, he gleefully boasted that he had beaten the American judicial system, especially David J. Novak, the assistant federal prosecutor brought in as the government’s death penalty expert.

Moussaoui clapped his hands and shouted: “America, you lost! David Novak, you lost! I won!”

Outside the courthouse, security was exceptionally tight. Scores of federal marshals and local sheriff’s deputies, some with machine guns, ringed the area. Others were perched on rooftops, while government helicopters hovered above.

Moussaoui is to be formally sentenced this morning. He is expected to spend the rest of his life at the government’s Supermax prison in Florence, Colo., where some of the country’s most notorious criminals are held in permanent solitary confinement. Among those reported as being there are Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph.

When the sentencing trial began two months ago, many observers thought the government was sure to secure the death penalty because Moussaoui had pleaded guilty to being a Sept. 11 conspirator. And when Moussaoui twice testified, he all but dared the jury to put him to death.

He bragged about his loyalty to Al Qaeda, his hatred for America and his supposed intended role as a fifth pilot that day 4 1/2 years ago when 2,972 people were killed at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a field in western Pennsylvania.

But as the trial progressed, the government’s case weakened. Moussaoui had been arrested while in flight school in Minnesota, and testimony and evidence showed that FBI officials in Washington never took him seriously as a possible threat to the U.S.

Most of all, he simply was not there: On the morning of Sept. 11, Moussaoui was confined to a jail cell in Minneapolis, awaiting deportation.

It was the wide disparity between the government’s argument that Moussaoui was a hijacking pilot-in-training and the defense team’s position that he was nothing more than an Al Qaeda stooge that clearly divided the jury.

To reach a death sentence, all 12 jurors had to agree.

Working their way through a 42-page verdict form, the jurors were required to side with the government on at least one of three statutory aggravating factors in order to make Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty. The jurors agreed with two of the three.

They found that Moussaoui “knowingly created a grave risk of death” as a Sept. 11 collaborator and that he was involved in “substantial planning and premeditation” in his activities in 2001 -- taking flight lessons in this country, buying short-bladed knives and accepting large sums of money wired from Al Qaeda leaders abroad.

But the jury found that Moussaoui did not commit the offenses of Sept. 11 in a “heinous, cruel, or depraved manner in that it involved torture or serious physical abuse” to the victims.

On that point, the jury seemed to be acknowledging he was not directly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

It was their response to other questions on the verdict form that led to the life sentence.

The jurors had to weigh seven aggravating factors posed by the government, and they sided with prosecutors on all but one. They found that Moussaoui came to the U.S. to learn to fly “in order to kill as many American citizens as possible.” They said the Sept. 11 attacks caused great numbers of deaths and injuries and destruction of property. And they said that Moussaoui had “demonstrated a lack of remorse for his criminal conduct.”

But in another aggravating factor, the jury said that Moussaoui’s actions did not directly cause the deaths and mayhem of Sept. 11.

By that, the jury seemed to be dismissing the key element of the government’s case: that because Moussaoui had lied when he was arrested in mid-August 2001, the FBI and federal aviation officials did not have a chance to learn about the looming terrorist attacks and perhaps stop them.

The jurors then turned their attention to two dozen possible mitigating factors. These were presented by his defense team as reasons his life should be spared. The jury decided that the mitigating factors outweighed the arguments by the government, and they voted to save him from execution.

Nine of the jurors said they believed that Moussaoui’s early childhood was “unstable” -- he was placed in orphanages and later had a “home life without structure and emotional and financial support.”

Nine also found that his father “had a violent temper and physically and emotionally abused his family.”

But none of the jurors believed he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, a major part of the defense’s case. And none believed that he wanted to be executed because it would “create a martyr for radical Muslim fundamentalists and to Al Qaeda in particular.”

Finally, three jurors determined that his role in the Sept. 11 operation, “if any,” was minor. Indeed, on a separate page, three jurors wrote their opinion “that Zacarias Moussaoui had limited knowledge of the 9/11 attack plans.”

Reaction to the verdict spanned the spectrum.

Government officials -- including President Bush and Deputy Atty. Gen. Paul J. McNulty, who helped oversee much of the prosecution strategy -- were obviously disappointed with the outcome. But they sought to put a positive face on the result.

“Mr. Moussaoui got a fair trial.... They spared his life, which is something that he evidently wasn’t willing to do for innocent American citizens,” the president said.

McNulty, speaking for the three-man prosecution team, said that regardless of what the jury decided, “the victims have triumphed” because the life sentence in itself was harsh.

“It only takes one juror to oppose the imposition of the death penalty, and we respect that,” McNulty said.

The French Consulate, which closely followed the trial, declared that it “was conducted in an exemplary fashion.”

Defense lawyers were more subdued than their client. Edward B. MacMahon Jr. said he thought the pivotal moment came when a dozen relatives of the Sept. 11 dead testified for the defense that they were getting on with their lives and were not seeking vengeance.

“None of them testified for Moussaoui,” he said, pointing out that none had asked that his life be spared. But, MacMahon said, “they spoke their minds uncowed by terror.”

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who testified during the trial, said he disagreed with the jury.

“To me, he helped to carry out the conspiracy, and helped to protect the conspiracy,” Giuliani said. “The appropriate penalty would have been death.”

The trial began badly for the government.

A government lawyer improperly coached aviation witnesses before their testimony, and the judge barred much of the government’s case.

The defense introduced evidence that the FBI had ignored numerous other warnings of impending attacks and was likely to have ignored a warning from Moussaoui as well. Defense lawyers also obtained interrogation statements from high-level Al Qaeda operatives who said Moussaoui was incompetent and had not been slated to play any role on Sept. 11.

But Moussaoui’s testimony, over his lawyers’ objections, appeared to change the tenor of the trial. He explained matter-of-factly how he had looked forward to killing Americans. He said that he had lied to the FBI after his arrest so the plot could go forward.

At the close of the first phase of the sentencing trial, the jury’s forewoman said the panel was unanimous on all four aspects of each of the three counts against Moussaoui. Those counts were conspiracy to commit international terrorism, destroy aircraft and use weapons of mass destruction.

After determining that Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty, jurors took up the question of whether he deserved to die. Prosecutors called dozens of family members of victims, who told wrenching tales of grief. Prosecutors also played a chilling tape from the cockpit recorder aboard United Flight 93, never heard publicly before, that captured the heroics of passengers who confronted the hijackers and prevented an attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Moussaoui took the stand again and denied he was crazy. Two defense psychologists said he was a paranoid schizophrenic, but a government psychiatrist said Moussaoui just had a personality disorder and was angry.

Defense lawyers also presented a videotaped interview with Moussaoui’s two sisters, both institutionalized in France and diagnosed as schizophrenic, who described growing up with beatings and other hardships.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Timeline

Major events in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui

*

2001

Aug. 17: Moussaoui is arrested on immigration charges after arousing suspicion at a Minnesota flight school.

Sept. 11: Terrorists crash jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Moussaoui is moved to New York and held as a material witness.

Dec. 11: Moussaoui is charged with six conspiracy counts related to the Sept. 11 attacks.

2002

March 28: Prosecutors announce they will seek the death penalty.

April 22: Moussaoui asks to represent himself. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema orders a mental evaluation.

July 25: Moussaoui tries to plead guilty to four counts, but withdraws the pleas.

2003

July 14: The Justice Department refuses to let Moussaoui question detained Al Qaeda leaders.

Oct. 2: Brinkema bars the government from seeking the death penalty.

2004

April 22: A federal appeals court reinstates the death penalty option. The court says Moussaoui may use government-prepared interrogation reports from detained Al Qaeda leaders but may not interview them.

2005

April 20: Brinkema meets with Moussaoui after he sends her a letter expressing his desire to plead guilty. The judge deems him competent to do so.

April 22: Moussaoui pleads guilty to all six charges.

2006

Feb. 6: Selection begins in Alexandria, Va., for a jury to decide whether Moussaoui gets the death penalty or life in prison.

March 13: Brinkema learns that a government lawyer coached witnesses, and threatens to eliminate the death penalty option.

March 27: Moussaoui testifies he was supposed to hijack a fifth jetliner on Sept. 11, 2001.

April 3: The jury finds Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty.

April 17: A defense psychologist testifies that Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic.

April 19: Half a dozen relatives of Sept. 11 victims testify on behalf of Moussaoui.

May 3: The jury rejects the death penalty and decides Moussaoui must spend his life in prison.

*

Source: Associated Press